Singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler’s music has always existed somewhere between the dreams you enter in your deepest sleep or the lost grip on reality after being awake when you shouldn’t be. On her ninth album The Path Of the Clouds, out now on Sacred Bones Records, she has created a work that dives deep into a new realm of consciousness.
Recorded during the pandemic, the self-produced record is the most stylistically adventurous record that Nadler has made to date. Songs bloom from her stark gothic folk into fully realized arrangements that Nadler had only hinted at before. As she made sketches of songs at home, she sent off the tracks to some notable collaborators like Marry Latmimore, Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, Jesse Chandler of Midlake and Mercury Rev, and Emma Ruth Rundle to give the abum layers that are brimming with exciting possibilities and gorgeous atmospherics.
In this conversation, Nadler and I discuss how binging Unsolved Mysteries helped her to explore some of the personal topics on The Path Of the Clouds. We also discuss how her life as a painter and an art teacher had helped her on the road to achieving a life in the arts, how opening for GHOST B.C. helped her to appreciate the heaviness of her own music and the great difference between metal and indie rock crowds, and of course, murder ballads.
Previous Episodes of In Conversation:
- The Beths
- Hand Habits
- Deerhoof
- Bush Tetras
- Full of Hell
- Tropical Fuck Storm
- Caleb Landry Jones
- Chubby & the Gang
- Museum of Love
- Anika
- Cassandra Jenkins
- Steve Turner of Mudhoney
- Alexis Marshall of Daughters
- Current Joys
- Tom Scharpling
- Sarah Lund of Unwound
- Genghis Tron
- Ben Swank of Third Man Records
- The Men
- Rick Maguire of Pile
- Damien Jurado
- Slim Moon of Kill Rock Stars
- Caveh Zahedi